People News: The Expo Group, GES, Leftfield Media Make New Hires

May 28, 2015

The month of May has been an unusually busy one for new hires across a wide variety of companies in the trade show industry.

The Expo Group hired Lloyd van Meter its new general manager in its Las Vegas offices. Van Meter has extensive freight expertise, as well as 15 years in the trade show industry and strong leadership skills honed in the U.S. Marine Corps.

The Expo Group also named Mitchell Gross as the new leader of its growing custom exhibits department. Gross also will continue to lead the Finance department for the company. Prior to becoming operations manager for MC2 Events Exhibits Environments, he spent several years in the financial world and has an undergraduate degree in finance, as well as his MBA.

Peter Tatara has joined the Leftfield Media as its director of Content and Communities. He comes to LeftField Media with 10 years of event management experience, previously serving as a content director with ReedPOP at Reed Exhibitions, where he oversaw 400-plus hours of content at New York Comic Con and was key in growing ReedPOP from a single event to a portfolio of more than 25 pop culture conventions around the U.S. and internationally in markets, including Australia, China, France, Germany, India, and Singapore.

He most recently worked at Azix Inc, where he served as an event director producing events with Japanese governmental, tourism, cultural and culinary partners.

GES brought on Dan Hilbert as senior vice president of its U.S. Events team. Hilbert has more than 25 years of experience in the event, agency and entertainment business.

Most recently, Hilbert was senior vice president of client engagement & strategy at TBA Global. Prior to joining TBA Global, he held senior level positions at other agencies and on the client side with Live Nation Entertainment, Ryan Partnership, Unilever and Labatt, USA.

Skyline Exhibits announced the retirement of Michael Thimmesch, its director of Customer Engagement.

Thimmesch began his Skyline career in 1988 as a copywriter eight years after Skyline was founded. In 2005, after 17 years with Skyline, he earned a director-level position.

During his tenure Thimmesch had a hand in generating over half a million leads for Skyline which resulted in over $1 billion in retail sales and helped Skyline to grow into the largest exhibit company in North America.

Thimmesch is also credited with publishing 11 industry white papers and eight exhibit education books. He has presented over 100 informational webinar sessions, which were attended by over 23,000 exhibitors. He has also written more than 200 blog posts on a variety of exhibiting topics.

Riverhouse Hotel & Convention Center, a full-service hotel and Central Oregon’s largest convention center that overlooks the Deschutes River, hired Erick Trachsel as Director of Sales and Moe Elwefati as Director of Food and Beverage.

Jarrett Dow joins NexxtShow as a graphics account executive. Dow has more than 10 years of graphic design, promotional design and web design experience.

Matthew Volpe joins NexxtShow as a system designer. Volpe has more than eight years of exhibit design and detailing experience.

Partner Voices

The Massachusetts Convention Center Authority’s Public Safety Team at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center (BCEC) and the Hynes Convention Center (Hynes) have taken their experiences to develop a comprehensive crisis management and emergency preparedness training program.